Chemical process development is an optimization procedure by which conditions are discovered to produce a chemical product efficiently, cost-effectively, safely, and with high quality assurance. Fundamental to this process in the chemical industry is the chemical reaction. The chemical reaction is affected by a wide range of physical variables. Since these variables are interdependent, the possible combinations and permutations of these variables are numerous. As a result, an enormous effort must be undertaken to study the various combinations of variables in order to identify the optimal set of conditions for conducting a given chemical reaction.
The current state of the art in chemical process development involves a manual survey of different reaction conditions, which is time consuming, labor intensive, and repetitive. For example, twelve solvents might be suitable for a given reaction. However, for the individual chemist to set up, work up, and analyze data from more than four experiments at a time becomes a difficult task. As a result, the chemist is limited to running four reactions at a time.
In the interest of expediency, perhaps the chemist can spend one day studying the choice of solvent for the reaction because many more variables must be investigated. Although the data from twelve solvents would be very useful, the chemist only has time to investigate four solvents. This process is then repeated for each of the other reaction variables.
These variables might include concentration, reaction times, temperature, type of reagents, amounts of reagents, etc. Because these variables are dependent upon one another, the number of experiments to be run quickly multiplies. The process becomes very repetitive. The chemist becomes bored and the quality of work is likely to decline. The end result is that only a small percentage of the possible combinations of variables is investigated using the manual approach.